Alice in Jungleland
by ALEX CARNEVALE
I may be an actress, I may be a writer, I may be — most probably — some man's grief.
- Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr.
1921. Former taxidermist and self-appointed naturalist Carl Akeley planned a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. His brainstorm was to slaughter a gorilla from one of the most remote regions of Africa, an animal first seen by Europeans in 1902. Who better to accompany him than a family with a six-year old daughter? That girl was Alice Bradley, and she would become more famous than them all, even the mountain gorilla, as the literary giant James Tiptree Jr.
There you see Alice's domineering mother Mary Hastings Bradley. This was not a garden variety safari. The destination was the Congo, and the journey was difficult, although not for Alice, who was carried most of the way by porters. Later she wrote that "If I dropped something I was quite accustomed to clap my hands and have six large, naked cannibals spring to attention and pick it up for me." Her mother penned a children's book about the trip called Alice in Jungleland and a book for adult audiences called On the Gorilla Trail. Alice's mother Mary Hastings Bradley would tour and lecture about this trip and others for the rest of her life.
one of the four gorillas killed during the trip
The impact it had on her only daughter was more profound. The horror of Africa's extremes affected the young Alice deeply. After slaughtering five gorillas, they kept one of the babies under Alice's cot, causing the smell of formaldehyde to pervade everything. Her mother killed a lion and posed next to it until it came back to life, not fully dead until she shot it in the heart.
....
